MOM NEEDS TREATMENT, NOT PRISON

There are two kinds of people in the world. The first kind cannot
imagine the circumstances in which they'd buy heroin for their own
child, as Oakland County prosecutors allege Sheila Black, the mother
of a 16-year-old Ferndale High School student, did last week.

The second kind have known or loved someone addicted to drugs or
alcohol, and many can imagine almost anything.

I know that's simplistic. And I don't mean to suggest that any sane
parent, including those whose own children have been caught in the maw
of addiction, would ever condone what Black is accused of.

But law-abiding citizens have many ways of expressing their
disapproval. If ever there was an instance in which the mechanical
imposition of a harsh prison sentence was the wrong way, surely this
is one.

The Bigger Problem

According to a neglect petition Oakland County prosecutors filed last
week, the 41-year-old Black had just purchased 10 bags of heroin with
the intent of delivering them to her son when police arrested her
outside his high school.

Black told the arresting officers she'd made the purchase after her
son threatened to kill himself if she didn't help him get drugs. She
appears to have had last-minute reservations about handing the heroin
over, but she was taken into custody after police found the narcotics
and a hypodermic syringe in her parked pickup.

In their petition seeking to terminate Black's parental rights,
prosecutors say Black is struggling with substance-abuse problems of
her own. She told police she was using OxyContin, a powerful
painkiller, on a daily basis, and witnesses say she appeared to be
under the influence of drugs at the time of her arrest.

But it's unclear whether the circumstances of Black's arrest will
allow her to be diverted to a program that emphasizes treatment rather
than incarceration.

She theoretically faces up to 20 years in prison on felony narcotics
charges, although such a sentence would be a dramatic departure from
the sentencing guidelines for first offenders.

To End Addiction, Fight It

More than four decades after then-President Richard Nixon coined the
phrase to describe a massive law enforcement effort against users and
suppliers, many law enforcement professionals continue to frame their
work as a war on drugs.

Some even say we're winning that war, pointing to a gradual decrease
in the proportion of Americans who use illegal narcotics -- about 1 in
14, compared with 1 in 7 a generation ago.

But you can't even get past Black and her son without exhausting the
metaphor's usefulness. Who are these two, exactly, in the war on
drugs? Enemy combatants? Civilian hostages? Victims of collateral damage?

Michigan and other states have made dramatic strides in recognizing
addiction as a problem susceptible to treatment, especially when
judges are empowered to use what one calls "short bursts of jail time"
to keep backsliding substance abusers on the treatment track.

But the resources available for treatment are still too limited. And
judges closest to the problem still enjoy too little discretion to
identify likely beneficiaries of treatment.

I don't know what toxic combination of maternal desperation and
chemical dependence leads a mother to feed her own son's heroin habit.
But I suspect the answer lies in the realm of neuroscience.

If addiction is to be defeated, the war against it must be prosecuted,
like the war on cancer, in laboratories and clinics